Wednesday, May 26, 2010

For the unfamiliar, a "reveal" in screenwriting parlance is the placement of key, revelatory information in a story. Most times, the last reveal is the most important revelation of all.

FADE IN:

When people ask me why I prefer older films to what’s coming out today, I always feel like I become this curmudgeonly old guy with no teeth on a porch somewhere who always rants about things “back in my day.”

But consider this comment by Lem Dobbs on the subject, paying particular attention to his points about both quality and quantity and how “they always used to be” that way:

Today? Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, Sasha Baron Cohen, Shia LaBeouf, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Jennifer Connelly, Sean Penn -- and at least three of them are the progeny of older Hollywood. Notice the slight drop-off in quantity and quality? Screenwriters and directors and composers and studio executives -- same story.

On a one-week visit to New York in the early 70s when my father had an exhibition there, I went to see THE EXORCIST (Friedkin), SERPICO (Lumet), PAPILLON (Schaffner), with Dustin Hoffman, MEAN STREETS, with Harvey Keitel, THE GETAWAY, a Foster-Brower production, WESTWORLD, with Brynner and Benjamin, and Woody Allen’s SLEEPER.

Wanna see what’s playing in New York this week? Yeah, it’s a head-scratcher why movies aren’t as good as they always used to be.

But it does call into question the observations made by so many that “we haven’t even scratched the surface” of the potential of filmed narrative, movie stories. Have we? Have narrative films as we know them peaked? Are they now in decline? #

FADE OUT

Lee A. Matthias

Quote of the Post:

It’s like movies have lost a limb. (as to the lack of great film scores today)

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

For the unfamiliar, a "reveal" in screenwriting parlance is the placement of key, revelatory information in a story. Most times, the last reveal is the most important revelation of all.

FADE IN:

Most films end up doing away with substantial portions of their script’s dialogue. The director eventually finds that lots of the story’s meaning is communicated or implied visually. The dialogue has become extraneous, unnecessary.

Consider:

From Tales from the Script, Edited by Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman, HarperCollins, 2010, p. 170, screenwriter Andrew W. Marlowe described an example of how the script differs from the movie:

There was this experience on Air Force One, where I’d written this little speech. Harrison came up to me and he said,

One of the things I definitely learned (from drawing cartoons) was how redundant dialogue can be at times. What you can do is rely on the image; (successful) comic books and films do this the whole time.

And later, on p. 165,

There’s a terrific urge to overstate because you’re afraid that people will miss something, and when I look at 28 Days Later, for example, which is the only screenplay I have ever written that went straight through to being made into a film, one of the things I think is tonally wrong about it is that it spells stuff out at times when it really doesn’t need to.

The problem is, screenplays, in their pre-film state, can’t rely on Harrison Ford’s “look.” They can’t always get things across that the eventual film, with ease, will do from within its visual, directorial, and performance arsenals. Worse, “spec” scripts from unproven screenwriters must get their stories across to an agency or studio reader already biased by the writer’s lack of experience. Yet those specs are held to the same standard.

Screenplays must communicate their meaning fully and clearly or risk losing their reader and the sale because of the potential casting of somebody like George Spelvin (non-actor extraordinaire), rather than Harrison Ford, not to mention other deficiencies like insufficient information, critical logic lapses, or merely a lack of emphasis. It may look like a duck, it may walk like a duck, but on the page, until it talks like a duck, it ain't a duck!

It recalls that old story about the blind men and the elephant: each man identified a different object as he touched some part of the beast. None “saw” the elephant. At least in the movie version of the fable, until they get Harrison Ford or Steven Spielberg, they’ll have to rely on the script. And, to all the spec writers out there, if that doesn't work, may the Ford be with you! #

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I've just published three "novels" of my screenplays, THE JUPE,FOE, and THE SLEEP OF REASON. These are part of a new effort to put the best new un-produced screenplays before you as movie-length novels. Now you can "read a movie" in about the same amount of time as it would take to see the film. The publisher is Aisle Seat Books. Check them out!

FOE

In a near-future world shattered by an alien invasion, a lone Special Ops soldier, unaware that he's the key to victory, stumbles on a group of disabled military vets holding their abandoned VA Hospital as the invaders lay siege.

THE SLEEP OF REASON

After his bride disappears on their European honeymoon, Richard Renfield traces her to a castle ruin in the Carpathian mountains, and confronts its undead inhabitants, determined to restore her to life and bring her home. An apocalyptic war of Good versus Evil.

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About Me

I am a writer with four published novels, others on the way, a nonfiction book, several screenplays written and in development. During and after college, I worked as a theater projectionist and manager, in public relations, and as a literary agent selling to publishers and producers. Two heads are better than one, so I keep a human skull on my desk for inspiration (and a second opinion--FWIW, he's dead-on). I currently work as a computer network administrator in government. I'm married and the father of two daughters.
“I’m a computer professional: I don’t lie, I manage information.”
Get in touch: LateralTao ( followed by the encircled "a" symbol, followed by the 5-letter name for the Google mail client, and then the period symbol followed by the usual 3-letter start to "communication") Now THAT oughta confuse the spambots out there.